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There have been a number of brilliant campaigns to alert young women to the rampant retouching of photos used in fashion advertising. Basically, 100 per cent of the models shown in magazines are digitally altered, often beyond recognition. My personal favourite is a video called “Time Lapse Video Photoshop Transformation Shows Model’s Extreme Change.” It went viral in October 2013 and is available at http://goo.gl/Vf9AEA.

In this short video clip, a fairly ordinary looking woman is digitally transformed into a glamorous supermodel. Her torso shrinks two sizes, her legs are lengthened, and she receives “a digitally sculpted backside.” It provides a great lesson in fashion fakery. As one commentator put it, the models in those ads also wish they had the bodies they are showing off.

Another shocker was the admission by retail chain H&M that some of its perfect-bodied models don’t even exist in real life. The company uses computer generated mannequins, both female and male, electronically pasting on the heads of real people and tinting the skin colour appropriately.

Somebody needs to perform a similar awareness service for guys. It turns out that males, especially young ones, are falling prey to various types of body dysmorphic disorder — the feeling that their bodies are just not good enough.

Evidence that college-age males are susceptible to media images comes from a study of 111 male undergraduates at Kent State University. Researchers showed them ads for products, some of them featuring shirtless males. “Results indicated that exposure to both muscular and slender images was associated with an increase in body dissatisfaction,” they conclude.

Another study, by Magdala Labre at the University of Florida, found that “while women tend to be most dissatisfied with their middle and lower bodies and their breasts, men have been found to be most unhappy with their middle and upper bodies, particularly abdomens, chests, and upper arms — body parts that frequently are emphasized in the media.”

There is some hope that we’re not just mindless victims of hot body advertising. A study called “GI Joe or Average Joe?” from the University of Queensland found that “men and women rated average-size models as equally effective in advertisements as muscular models. For men, exposure to average-size models was associated with more positive body image in comparison to viewing no models, but no difference was found in comparison to muscular models.”

A large, 12-year-long study from Boston Children’s Hospital found that guys who tried to slim down or “beef up” had higher rates of other conditions such as depression, drug use, and binge drinking.

Researcher Alison Field and colleagues tracked 5,527 U.S. males aged 12 to 18 years, asking them periodically about how they perceive their bodies and if they were engaging in certain body modification behaviours. The first shocker was the percentage of late adolescent boys and young men, 7.6 per cent, who admitted taking dangerous substances to increase muscularity. “The frequency of use of products such as anabolic steroids to increase muscle size and enhance body size are at least as common among males as purging is among females,” the researchers write. So while we’re not seeing guys running to the bathroom to vomit up their latest meal, they are popping pills that can cause serious health problems. The researchers also singled out creatine supplements and growth hormone derivatives as a concern. Some muscle building substances that are widely available online haven’t been fully tested in this age group.

As for body image, 17.9 per cent of adolescent boys and young men reported being extremely concerned with their weight or physique at some point during the study. The linkage to other problems such as depression seems to work as follows. Guys who seek to be thinner, which is the form of eating disorder usually seen in females, seemed to be more prone to bouts of depression. Those who were aiming for more muscularity were more likely than the peers to engage in binge drinking and taking illegal drugs.

It’s worth noting that how a person looks and develops is a combination of genetics, diet, and exercise habits. The same Internet that allows guys to order dodgy supplements will provide endless advice on “getting six pack abs.” The truth is that we all have them, the rectus abdominis muscle, hidden down there somewhere. However in many people they don’t show up because they are covered in layers of fat. Genetics has a lot to do with how your body deposits fat. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to slim down and work your muscles. Still, no matter how hard they try, some people are just never going to make the cover of a fitness magazine.

The important thing is to approach body image sensibly, and realize that many of the images we are exposed to in advertising are actually faked or freaks. You might also inject a sense of humour. One wag, Shane Sargent, writing on a discussion board about getting those elusive six pack abs, commented “I have a keg so you will find I trump your six pack at any party.”

Dr. Tom Keenan is an award winning journalist, public speaker, professor in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary, and author of the forthcoming book, Technocreep, www.orbooks.com/catalog/technocreep/

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